Bretton Woods Conference

The Bretton Woods Conference was an international financial conference of 730 representatives of fourty-four countries which met in the town of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire from 1 to 22 July 1944. The conference devised a system of exchange rates which were pegged to the US dollar, and the conference also established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Monetary Fund. After an initial collapse in 1947, the system of fixed income rates survived in modified form until August 1971, when the USA left the agreement. In face of increasing capital mobility, and consequent inability of the governments control the exchange rate, the system of fixed exchange rates was finally abandoned in 1976.